What should I study in order to write/program a career search software?

More programming. And logic.

You need to understand how to develop a search for terms, and then also determine where to search, and then how to optimize search results in a relational database.

Save your money and check out this free course from MIT: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-0001-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-in-python-fall-2016/

Since you like games, look for online tutorials on how to use Pygame.

Have you written any code yet? Try testing out features of Python by creating your own programs. They don’t have to do anything spectacular. You learn to program by writing programs. One great thing about Python is that it is so easy to write small programs. Here is a one line Python program: print(“Hello, world!”) You can read a ton of books, but until you start writing programs, you don’t know anything. You will definitely make mistakes along the way, but the feedback you get from the computer is immediate and acts as a great learning tool. If you get stuck, there are plenty of programmers on Fluther to help you.

I’m not sure why you always set your sights so far ahead of what you should be aiming for. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is to discourage yourself. First learn to crawl, then walk, then run, then you can start training for the marathon.

Since this seems to be something that you wish to do for you, why pay to take a class when you can do it on your own? My local library has free courses twice a year that are good on getting you started. Have you checked out Free Code Camp? You can do their classes at your own pace. It might not be python specific but they train you in enough of the basics that you have the knowledge to move into any language that you choose to go. FCC also has mentoring groups all over the US where these groups meet monthly & share ideas & help the newbies with their questions or confusion. They can also help you to determine the most efficient language for your project. You can get language specific books from your local library for free or if you’re an Amazon Prime member, they have many good books that you can read for free. I even found some really good Kindle books for 99 cents that I can reference whenever I need to. I didn’t have the time nor money to go back to school & I’m getting a lot of pleasure when I learn it on my own!!! Just a thought.